Discourse Analysis

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT II Instructor: Dr. Alexander Nikolaou By Martha Peraki  To what extent do you believe that teachers of EFL/ESL should attempt to raise their students’ critical awareness of discourse, in both their mother tongue and in English? According to Van Dijk and Pennycook (2001), ‘Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in language classes does not necessarily involve a change in teaching method or techniques. Rather, CDA offers a new perspective on language, which considers that language use (a) is questionable and problematic (b) reflects social/ideological processes and (c) constitutes, at the same time, a resource to act upon those processes’. Wright and Bolitho (1993) view three types of competence that learners need to develop: user, analyst and teacher. ‘The choices teachers or materials developers make in selecting or adapting texts to represent language use can be critically analysed, and this analysis can be made in the classroom together with the pupils, while developing their procedural skills. By doing this, the EFL teacher’s task can go beyond linguistic training and become a really educational undertaking, with the aim of helping the pupils develop their internal values and capacity to criticize the world’. Van Lier (1996) views educational goals to include a set of ‘lifelong learning skills’ which are: (a) deal with the unexpected, (b) make informed choices, (c) develop sharp observational skills, (d) construct useful knowledge in one’s interaction with the world, and (e) be guided by internal values, convictions and reasons. Many of these skills can be included within the definition of ‘critical’ as according to the Collins Cobuild Dictionary (1987) ‘a critical approach to something involves examining and judging it carefully’. So, in order to deal with the unexpected, you have to examine it first with sharp observational skills and be able to construct useful knowledge through the examination. Then you can judge it being equipped with internal values, convictions and reasons and make an informed choice on your response. Van Dijk (1997) sees CDA is an approach to the analysis of language use that (a) considers discourse as a practical, social and cultural phenomenon, (b) views the relationship between discourse and context as dialectical and (c) distinguishes between local and more global functions of discourse ‘in a hierarchy that goes from the particular pragmatic function (…) in a text (for example, apologizing, inviting) to social, political and cultural functions (for example, promoting globalization, discriminating)’. ‘Language use – discourse – is not just a matter of performing tasks, it is also a matter of expressing and constituting and reproducing social identities and social relations, including crucially relations of power’ (Fairclough, p.196). ‘Education, (…) is not just passing things on (though it is partly that); it is developing the child’s critical consciousness and her capacity to contribute to the shaping and reshaping of her social world’ (p.197). So, students should not be presented with a social environment over which they seem not to have any control (which is exactly how it is presented in schools). A ‘genuinely educational orientation to language (…) must be based upon a critical model of language such as CLS’ (Critical Language Study). The kind of language study that Fairclough is proposing, ‘stresses the development of a critical consciousness among children of the orders of discourse of their society’ (p.198). Fairclough proposes a model of CDA which considers discourse as the result of three different types of practice: social, discursive and textual. In the social practice phase of the activity learners reflect upon: the way the text contributes to a particular representation of the world and if this representation comes into conflict with their own representations; how the textual representation is shaped by the ideological position of its producer(s) and how it contributes to reinforcing or changing the ideological position of its readers. In the second phase of Discourse practice, the focus is on the ‘specificity of the communicative situation of which the text forms part, taking into account material and cognitive circumstances such as the genre of the text, the different propositions contributing to the coherence of the text and the readers’ knowledge of the world. So, when learners deal with a specific text, some of the questions they could try to answer, are: (a) where can you find a text like this? What kind of readers is it addressed to? (b) What is the point of the text? What is the author trying to tell us? (c) What do you know about…? How does the author of the text try to show us that…? The focus of the textual practice is on ‘reflecting upon salient formal and semantic features of text construction involving different levels of linguistic analysis and contributing to a global interpretation of the text’ (for example, connectors, modality, vocabulary). Following the model Fairclough proposed, Cots made a list of questions that teachers can use in order to have a critical approach to language use and as a reference framework to plan how to present language use to learners: ‘Social practice What social identities does/do the author(s) of the text represent? What is the relationship between the social identities the author(s) represent(s)? What is/are the social goal(s) the author(s) has/have with the text? To what extent is the text necessary to accomplish the goal(s)? In what kind of social situation is the text produced? How conventional is it? Does/Do the author(s) represent or appeal to particular beliefs? What are/may be the social consequences of the text? Discourse practice How conventional is the text taking into account its situation of use? Does it remind us of other texts we have encountered either in its form or in its content? Can we classify it as representative of a specific type? Is the text more or less accessible to different kinds of readers? Does it require us to ‘read between the lines’? Does it presuppose anything? Who are the producer(s) and intended receiver(s) of the text? Textual practice If the text is co-operatively constructed (for example, a conversation), is it obvious in any way that one of the participants is more in control of the construction than the others? How are the ideas represented by utterances, sentences or paragraphs connected in the text? Does/Do the author(s) follow any rules of politeness? Are there features in the text that contribute to projecting a specific image of the author(s)? Is the author’s attitude expressed in the text? How does syntactic structure as well as lexical choice affect the meaning? Are there alternatives? Are there any relevant terms, expressions or metaphors that contribute to characterising the text?’ ‘The principles which should guide teachers on how far and in what ways the model should be made explicit to pupils’ and so ‘what pupils should be taught’, are rooted in this conception of the relationship between the development of language capabilities and critical language awareness’. In this model (Fairclough) provides two main guiding principles; the first is marrying purposeful discourse practice and critical language awareness and the second is that critical language awareness should be built upon existing language capabilities and experience of the children. As far as critical language awareness is concerned, Fairclough distinguishes two levels of development: level one concerns the awareness of members’ resources (what people have in their heads and draw upon when they produce or interpret texts such as their knowledge of language, their understanding of the natural and social world they live in, values, beliefs, assumptions, etc) in production and interpretation and level two the awareness of the social determinants of members’ resources. The level one stage, is about helping people become aware of how rich array of resources they have for discourse and the way they can use these resources in producing and interpreting text. Unconscious capabilities are focused upon so that children become aware of their purposeful discourse (‘i.e. discourse they themselves engage in as producers or interpreters for real purposes, rather than what they might do as an exercise, or what others do); and that, on the other hand, the range of purposeful discourse available to children will be enhanced as their awareness grows’ (p.199). The second level is the explanation stage of the procedure where once children become aware of how their members’ resources (MR) function in discourse they can start questioning its social origins, the effects upon it from power relations and how both the MR and the social relations are reproduced and transformed in discourse. ‘This second level of awareness is essential if the schools are to develop children’s language capabilities to the point where the common-sense practices and constraints of currently dominant orders of discourse are probed, challenged and transformed –rather than simply training children to be good at being conventional’ (p.199). The principle of marrying awareness and practice shows what children should be learning about language, while the principle of building on experience suggests the way it should be taught. Children should be aware of their ability to talk or write; they need a language for talking about language (a metalanguage) which will be very carefully designed to enable them to describe, interpret and explain texts, interactions and social context. ‘The principle of building on experience claims that language awareness, like social consciousness more generally, can be most effectively developed if children are helped to put such understanding and experience into words, and if these wordings become the basis for building awareness’ (p.200). So, how should children be taught about language? Fairclough sees it as a four-part-cycle where the starting point is the reflection on experience of children, then the systematizing of their experience, the explanation and the practice development. If for example, the focus is on writing and how children can extend their capacity to use written language for special purposes such as the writing of history, the teacher’s procedure would be as follows: Reflection on experience: children are asked to think about and describe the purposes for which they use writing instead of speech, what it is ‘for’, for what purpose others use it and not them, and which uses of writing have more prestige, in their opinion. Systematizing experience: present a systematic account of the differences of function between speech and writing, the social implications of various uses of writing, and the distribution of access to prestigious uses. Explanation: this knowledge becomes an object of further collective reflection and analysis by the class, and social explanations are sought. ‘Use (i) and (ii) as the basis for class reflection on the social reasons for access to prestigious uses of writing being restricted; focusing upon history, and social constraints on who writes history, as well as its subject matter, the language in which it is written, and so forth’ (p.201). Developing practice: the awareness resulting from (i)-(iii) is used to develop the child’s capacity for purposeful discourse. Set up a history-writing project for the children, in which they are encouraged to stretch or break conventions for history writing by: (a) writing a history of a grouping , whose history is not normally written (such as women or children in their local community); (b) writing in a language not normally used (the language of a minority) for such purposes; (c) feel they are doing an important and serious task by writing for a real purpose rather than doing an exercise and they could even want to make copies for other people (peers, families) to read. This cycle can be repeated over and over again as past experience can be reflected upon and the teacher’s facilitation role can become more substantial. This kind of discourse is ‘outside of currently dominant conventions’ and is made to lead children to producing what Fairclough calls ‘emancipatory discourse’. This kind of discourse can either empower or contribute to the transformation of existing orders of discourse. In the case of empowerment, people conventionally excluded from particular types of discourse or even subject positions, can ‘infringe conventions’ by ‘entering’ these discourse types or positions without subjecting them in any radical changes. This empowerment can actually help people overcome their sense of impotence and show them that the existing orders of discourse ‘are not immutable’. Also, by transforming the existing orders of discourse, the existing orders are being de-structured and new orders are restructured. To sum up, what Fairclough suggests ‘on the basis of the two guiding principles set out earlier is that the development of children’s language capabilities should proceed through bringing together their existing abilities and experiences, their growing critical awareness of language, and their growing capacity to engage in purposeful discourse’ (p.202). Word Count: 2,175 REFERENCES Fairclough, N. (2001) Language and Power. Longman (Second Edition) Demo A. Douglas (2001) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. ERIC Digest in WWW.CAL.ORG/ERICCLL Cots M. Josef (ELT Journal 2006) Teaching ‘with an attitude’: Critical Discourse Analysis in EFL teaching. In http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/60/4/336 Widdowson, H. G. (1973) An Applied Linguistic Approach To Discourse Analysis. University of Edinburgh, in www.britishcouncil.uk Coulthard, M. (1985) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (2nd edn.) Harlow: Longman